What does church look like as things start to reopen?

The following was published on the Faith page of the Winnipeg Free Press on June 10, 2020.

I keep getting asked: "When do you think we’ll be able to have church services again?" And I keep wondering how we got to this point of thinking that church services on Sunday mornings are what it means to be a church.

As a pastor, I think that way myself. I’ve put enormous amounts of time and energy into providing well-organized Sunday services. I’ve thought of the people who attend on Sundays as being who we are as a church: it’s who I can see, and it’s how they see me.

And there’s merit to that. A local church is defined by its unique values and emphases, and the people who feel united in those distinctives want to be together and grow together. I agree with the importance of that. There’s great value in the love and joy and synergy that’s expressed when a local church gathers together as a community, and I love those gatherings.

But that’s not the only way for the church to express community, and maybe not even the best way.

As the Manitoba government has introduced the next phase in what we want to be a safe reopening of our city and province, we’ve been told that it’s permissible for groups of up to 25 people to meet indoors, safely socially distanced.

This announcement was made shortly before I found myself reading in my Bible that in the early days of the Church, and amidst great opposition, "Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah." (Acts 5:42)

We might consider the reference to "the temple" as the equivalent of "having church services," but it wouldn’t have been what we do on Sunday mornings.

Back then, the temple was a focal point for Jewish religious practices, and Christians would have likely been there to tell others about Jesus rather than to have what we’d consider a tidy Christian worship service. Their unhindered Christian worship was far more likely to happen in their houses, in smaller clusters where a true sense of community and fellowship would be felt, and that’s one place you’d have found them "day after day," teaching about Jesus.

So what about 2020 in Winnipeg? If we still can’t safely meet in our church buildings because having six feet of distance between you and anyone around you means that each person needs 36 square feet of personal space, then what’s to be done?

Why don’t we take a page out of the book of Acts, and choose to never stop teaching Jesus in our homes?

That can mean establishing what’s been known as a family altar — a family time of looking at a story or a lesson in the Bible together and praying together about how to put it into practice. It could be part of children’s bedtime or after a meal. Married couples or roommates could take time to pray together on a regular basis.

The key is being intentional about scheduling something regularly so that Christ will continue to be honoured in our homes and families.

Teaching about Jesus "from house to house" can also mean that churches meet regularly in houses or back yards rather than in buildings, as long as there is adequate space for safe social-distancing. Small groups like these can be ideal places for relationship-building, for sharing prayer requests, for practising spiritual gifts and for looking in God’s Word together.

Why should we consider such examples as lesser expressions of what it means to be a church? If families and small groups are committed to the unique values and emphases of the local church that they’re a part of, and to the online teaching their church is presently offering, it seems to me that such gatherings are a wonderful expression of the Church representing Jesus in Winnipeg!

I don’t honestly know when we’ll be able to have large church services again, but as long as we have houses, we never need to stop "teaching and proclaiming the good news of Jesus." And as our provincial leaders seek to gradually reopen the province safely, let’s get back "to church" by establishing family altars and by gathering with friends in our homes (according to Manitoba health guidelines).

One-anothering one another during COVID-19

The following article was published on the Faith page of the Winnipeg Free Press on May 1, 2020.

I had just finished a very encouraging conversation. It was in mid-March, and a friend in my congregation was going through a difficult time. We got together for an evening to talk. It was quite late when I got home, but that felt irrelevant. What felt far more important was that we’d been able to personally connect with each other about such heartfelt issues.

The next morning — bam! The unheard-of occurred. Social-distancing measures went into effect in Manitoba. Our senior pastor quickly initiated an online meeting to discuss how we would respond as a church staff in light of these new measures.

There was no argument that the measures were valuable and necessary. We wanted to do our part to minimize the impact of this terrible virus on our health-care workers and our city. But how would pastors who felt called to care for others do so when we were being asked to distance ourselves from everyone?

It didn’t help that on that very day my friend, the one I met earlier, contacted me asking: "When can we connect again?" When, indeed? I didn’t know.

We live in an age that seems to have endless ways to connect with each other. Facebook alone claims to have 2.5 billion users. It’s reported by Zephoria Digital Marketing that five new Facebook profiles are created every second, and that every 60 seconds 510,000 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and 136,000 photos are uploaded.

And there are literally dozens and dozens of other social-media websites available for people to interact online.

We as pastors were quickly introduced to tools that many others had been using for a long time: Zoom, Hangouts and other video-conferencing apps. I even "got together" that first day with someone using one of those options.

It was helpful to chat with people on video screens, but it was also obviously very new and not altogether comfortable for many. It was then I discovered an old friend: the telephone. I began calling people — many people! In the past month, I’ve connected with many dozens of people in our church and I’ve been surprised how meaningful many of those calls have been.

Some have gotten choked up — one person began crying, and many were truly encouraged that someone called to see how they were doing. Some had just had a very hard day or were facing imminent challenges; they appreciated having someone to talk to about it.

It became obvious that even in isolation, I could connect with people regarding heartfelt issues, just as I had done in person with my friend on that evening before this pandemic reached us.

And that’s why I began encouraging people to do it, too. Connecting isn’t something only pastors are meant to do. The Bible contains many of what are known as "one another" verses. They say things like, "love one another," "care for one another," "comfort one another," "encourage one another" and "bear one another’s burdens." All followers of Jesus can do these things!

I like to call it one-anothering one another, and it’s something sorely needed in these days of isolation due to COVID-19. All it takes is picking up a phone and calling whoever comes to mind. Ask how they’re doing, especially those who are health-care workers, a staff person at a grocery store or someone else considered an essential service.

If we all do this, I believe our city will begin to feel a little less lonely and little more encouraged. All it takes is being intentional about connecting with our fellow quarantiners with a simple telephone — and one-anothering one another.

© 2020 by Ken Peters

A lesson even Dirty Harry knew...

I've already admitted that God spoke to me from one of Arnie's Terminator movies, as well as from Sly in one of the Rocky movies, so why wouldn't He be able to from Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry? It was just the other day, as I flicked on the TV and caught the last 20 minutes or so of Magnum Force, that I heard Clint growl a line that left me wondering if God had me in His sights.

It was a simple line, and one that I at first dismissed even though I couldn't help but feel provoked by it. Take a listen to this brief clip...

I don't know about you, but I often can't resist comparing myself to others in my line of work only to be left feeling discouraged at how inadequate I perceive myself to be compared to how amazing they seem to be! It's like I believe that, in order to feel truly adequate or acceptable, I have to be as good as whoever I'm tempted to compare myself to at whatever they do well at. And since I know some very gifted pastors, that can leave me feeling pretty useless at times! And not only useless, but exhausted as well after wasting time trying to excel at things that aren't my areas of strength. Of course, it also reflects a definite lack of humility as I try to be some kind of Superman rather than celebrating the diversity of strengths within the team of pastors around me.

So that's why I think it's important to heed Harry Callahan's advice in the above video. And that's why I also think that Paul wrote in Romans 12:3-4, "For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them..."

We all have a unique measure of faith and grace, and each of us has a different spiritual gift mix according to that grace. That means that we need one another as each of us brings our strengths to help with things in areas in which some of us feel weak. And that means we can appreciate each person's contribution, unthreatened by how much better others are at things we don't do so well. 

After all, as much as God calls us to believe Him to do miracles through us, the only way to avoid the petty jealousies that can arise as God uses specific people to do those miracles, is to get to know our limitations – and to be grateful that others have the strengths to make up for them.

© 2011 by Ken Peters

"One anothering one another"

My previous posting made reference to the importance of living a missional as well as an attractional lifestyle. I've written before about learning to live missionally, but wanted to say more here about the priority of also living attractionally. This is a theme throughout the entire New Testament as writer after writer goes to great lengths to describe how Christians are meant to live in community with one another.

In fact, the term "one another" occurs 56 times in a relational sense in the New American Standard New Testament. "Love one another" is 17 -- or 30% -- of those references, but in essence, all of those references are about loving one another. Such verses are the nuts and bolts of Christian community. Their intent is to explain how people can live together harmoniously. They express how we can demonstrate such a unity of spirit to a watching world that people will recognize that we are followers of Jesus! After all, Jesus did say, "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35).

There are at least 25 unique and practical ways that the New Testament writers explicitly urge us to express our love for "one another." The theme of this collection of "one another" verses is what I like to call "one anothering one another!"

Try reading this selection of references in sequence. It can be both a challenging and encouraging exercise. Then let’s one another one another!

• "...be at peace with one another." (Mark 9:50)
• "This I command you, that you love one another." (John 15:17)
• "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love..." (Romans 12:10)
  
• "...give preference to one another in honour" (Romans 12:10)
• "...let us not judge one another..." (Romans 14:13)
• "So then let us pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another." (Romans 14:19)
• "...be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus." (Romans 15:5)
• "...accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us..." (Romans 15:7)
• “…through love serve one another.” (Galatians 5:13)
• “Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2)
• "I entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called,...showing forbearance to one another in love" (Ephesians 4:1-2)
• "And be kind to one another..." (Ephesians 4:32)
• "...and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ." (Ephesians 5:21)
• "...regard one another as more important than [your]self."
• "...bearing with one another..." (Colossians 3:13)
•  (Philippians 2:3)
• "...forgiving each other..." (Colossians 3:13)
• "...teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God." (Colossians 3:16)
• "Live in peace with one another." (1 Thessalonians 5:13)
• "...always seek after that which is good for one another..." (1 Thessalonians 5:15)
• "...encourage one another day after day..." (Hebrews 3:13)
• "...let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds" (Hebrews 10:24)
• "Do not speak against one another, brethren." (James 4:11)
• "Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed." (James 5:16)
• "Be hospitable to one another without complaint." (1 Peter 4:8)
• "...clothe yourselves with humility toward one another..." (1 Peter 5:5)

© 2009 by Ken Peters

Being both Missional and Attractional

As I’ve been reading about how we as Christians can be more effective as good workers who do the good works God has called us to do (Ephesians 2:10), I’ve noticed that many seem to feel the need to consider two common themes as being at odds with each other: being Missional and being Attractional.

These two words represent more than just the adding of the suffix “–al” to some old and static nouns in order to make them into fresh and exciting adjectives! They take something like a mission trip, an event that has a beginning and an end to it, and make it a descriptive word about how we’re meant to live all the time -- missionally! The word missional is an extremely positive word that describes a person who makes mission a part of who they are and how they live, not just something they do.
But the word attractional has typically been viewed in a negative light. Many use it to describe Christians who make a lifestyle of trying to attract people to their church buildings while doing little to go out to them and become a part of their lives. It's a "Let them come to us" mentality. An attitude that expects people to find the church relevant to their lives apart from any meaningful relationship with anyone in the church.

Such positive and negative applications of these two words have caused people to use them in a way that polarizes them to two opposite extremes. People describe a church as either missional or attractional, only one being considered acceptable. But I disagree. I believe that both are extremely important aspects of Christian outreach.

Jesus called us to live in such a way that reaches out in love to our neighbours and that attracts those same neighbours to the love we have for one another in the Body of Christ. One goes out and the other invites people in. If we’re only missional and never attractional, people will never be added to the Church, which God was doing continually throughout the book of Acts. And if we’re only attractional and never missional, the Church will never reach the many people who would never come near a church unless they first met a Christian who showed them what Jesus is like.

I believe we’re meant to be both missional in how we go out, faithfully demonstrating what we believe, and attractional in how we invite people in, lovingly offering them a place to belong. Being missional is the “Love your neighbour” command of evangelism and being attractional is the “Love one another” command of community. They go together. We reach out and we invite in. And though these two activities will often try to compete for our time and energy, we must make them partners in our desire to see people saved and added to the corporate expression of the Body of Christ.

© 2009 by Ken Peters

My enthusiasm for the Pillar of the Truth

I've grown tired of the church-bashing jargon that gets tossed around so flippantly by some Christians these days. It's as though the Church of Christ was just another piece of plastic in our disposable world that we can discard when it no longer feels relevant to our fickle souls. Yes, I know that people have been hurt in churches and so that seems to legitimize a disregard for whatever caused them pain. But I'm not so sure. It seems to me that the Church of Christ is too important for such drastic reactions. My reading of the New Testament leaves me convinced that the corporate and unified expression of Christianity is not an option -- but is a vital part of God's plan.

An old friend of mine who is quite the scholar has for some time been grappling with the place of the church in this world. In one of his reflections on this topic, he quotes William Willimon, a Methodist bishop, theologian, writer and preacher whom I'd never read anything by...

"I hold to the statement that we [he and Stanley Hauerwas] made in Resident Aliens. 'The only way for the world to know what it is to be redeemed is for the church to point to the Redeemer by being a redeemed people.' The only way for the world to know that it is the world -- namely fallen, corrupt, yet being saved and redeemed -- is through the presence of a 'being saved and being redeemed' community, the church. Salvation must have institutional embodiment, for it is hard to keep so strange a story going, over time, across the generations when the triumvirate of the government, the economy, and Hollywood have such powerful means of marginalizing such a story. It's hard to envision a new heaven and a new earth, all things restored in Jesus, if we do not at least have a glimpse of that future here and now. Left to our own devices, we tend to regard this world with its present princes, powers and social arrangements as normal. The church's existence is in itself a corporate, material, political claim about salvation that the world cannot smother, despite its best efforts." (Emphases mine)

As more and more people seek to distance themselves from what they call organized religion and institutional Christianity, I think of things that Paul said as he wrote to Timothy. Right there in the inspired pages of the New Testament, Paul gave us his view of the Church. He instructed Timothy to establish the office of overseers (1 Timothy 3:1) and explained that there must be qualifications for both overseers and deacons (3:2-13). Paul spoke of people having authority to rule in the Church (5:17) and of there being roles in the Church, such as the public readings of Scripture in obvious reference to the public gatherings of the Church itself (4:11-14). And he spoke of young and old all being together in unity in the Church (1 Timothy 5).

I don't intend this to be a study of everything Paul wrote about the Church. I simply want to reinforce the idea that the Church is actually meant to be an organized and structured corporate expression in which authority is exercised and unity is essential. Such ideas are not the evil invention of some controlling so-called modernists!

There is one statement Paul makes that seems to communicate this better than any other, and it appears right after all his organizational talk of offices and overseers : "I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth (1 Timothy 3:14-15).

Two things jump out at me in that statement. One is that Paul saw the corporate expression of Christianity as a "household" or as a family, something that has its own necessary expressions of authority and unity, and which is meant to be defined by God rather than by the preferences of humanity.

The second is that the Church is a "pillar and buttress of the truth." Ask your average Christian what they think the pillar of the truth is and they'll likely say the Word of God or Christ Himself (the living Word). But Paul says it's the Church. In other words, the Church is needed in a unified corporate expression -- with its offices and its public gatherings -- in order for a watching world to know what the truth is. So why don't we as Christians stop bashing the church, and instead try to be of assistance as it sincerely attempts to accomplish that task (in all its many valid expressions)!

© 2009 by Ken Peters

No-Nonsense Christianity!

When he was sixty years old, John Steinbeck set out to re-explore America. He was accompanied by Charley, his French poodle, and he traveled in a truck camper named after Don Quixote’s horse, Rocinante. He then wrote about his trip in the book, Travels with Charley, in Search of America (1962).

The following is a superbly -- and hilariously -- written excerpt from that book about a trip to church one Sunday morning.

Sunday morning, in a Vermont town, my last day in New England, I shaved, dressed in a suit, polished my shoes, whited my sepulcher, and looked for a church to attend. Several I eliminated for reasons I do not now remember, but on seeing a John Knox church I drove into a side street and parked Rocinante out of sight, gave Charley his instructions about watching the truck, and took my way with dignity to a church of blindingly white ship lap. I took my seat in the rear of the spotless, polished place of worship. The prayers were to the point, directing the attention of the Almighty to certain weaknesses and undivine tendencies I know to be mine and could only suppose were shared by others gathered there.

The service did my heart and I hope my soul some good. It had been long since I had heard such an approach. It is our practice now, at least in the large cities, to find from our psychiatric priesthood that our sins aren’t really sins at all but accidents that are set in motion by forces beyond our control. There was no such nonsense in this church. The minister, a man of iron with tool-steel eyes and a delivery like a pneumatic drill, opened up with prayer and reassured us that we were a pretty sorry lot. And he was right. We didn't amount to much to start with, and due to our own tawdry efforts we had been slipping ever since. Then, having softened us up, he went into a glorious sermon, a fire-and-brimstone sermon. Having proved that we, or perhaps only I, were no damn good, he painted with cool certainty what was likely to happen to us if we didn't make some basic reorganizations for which he didn't hold out much hope. He spoke of hell as an expert, not the mush-mush hell of these soft days, but a well-stoked, white-hot hell served by technicians of the first order. This reverend brought it to a point where we could understand it, a good hard coal fire, plenty of draft, and a squad of open-hearth devils who put their hearts into their work, and their work was me. I began to feel good all over. For some years now God has been a pal to us, practicing togetherness, and that causes the same emptiness a father does playing softball with his son. But this Vermont God cared enough about me to go to a lot of trouble kicking the hell out of me. He put my sins in a new perspective. Whereas they had been small and mean and nasty and best forgotten, this minister gave them some size and bloom and dignity. I hadn't been thinking very well of myself for some years, but if my sins had this dimension there was some pride left. I wasn't a naughty child but a first rate sinner, and I was going to catch it.

I felt so revived in spirit that I put five dollars in the plate, and afterward, in front of the church, shook hands warmly with the minister and as many of the congregation as I could. It gave me a lovely sense of evil-doing that lasted clear through till Tuesday. I even considered beating Charley to give him some satisfaction too, because Charley is only a little less sinful than I am. All across the country I went to church on Sundays, a different denomination every week, but nowhere did I find the quality of that Vermont preacher. He forged a religion designed to last, not predigested obsolescence.

© 2009 by Ken Peters

Influenced by His Glory! (church bulletin cover)

It’s been said that Gateway’s South congregation is now moving from being “tent-dwellers” to having a building. But as I consider their move into a building in Fort Rouge, I recall what happened at the completion of the tabernacle in Exodus 40. I’ve always been amazed at the description of God’s glory filling the Tent of Meeting as the tabernacle was completed. What a sight that must have been —this cloud coming and covering the tent and filling the entire tabernacle, and then becoming a fire at night! And it says that Moses, the man with whom God spoke from the cloud at the entrance of his tent — the man whose face would shine from being so near to the LORD — couldn’t even enter the tent of meeting because it was so full of God’s glory! Exodus 40:38 says that “throughout all their journeys, the cloud of the LORD was on the tabernacle by day, and there was fire in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel.”

That verse shifts my amazement to confusion. With this awesome display of glory ever before the Israelites, how could they have ever shrunk back from the things God told them to do, such as when He urged them to go in and take the land? And as that question occurs to me, I realize that I’m caught. Caught in the same confusing acts of unbelief before God’s awesome glory as the Israelites were so prone to. After all, I’ve seen God’s glory revealed in the love and mercy of His Son on the cross. I’ve experienced the goodness of the Gospel at work in my life as Christ has come and made His tabernacle in my heart! And corporately speaking, we’ve seen God extravagantly provide for us to purchase the building on Rathgar, thereby providing a new home for Gateway South. And yet as human beings, we are so prone to unbelief, often doubting that God will be enough for us as He calls us to obedience, such as the taking of new land in which His glory is to be made known.

What are we to do? As I read Exodus 40 again, I want us as a community of faith to be so influenced by God’s display of His glory through His work in our lives and in our midst, that we would be filled with an unshakeable awe and confidence in the God who chose us to be His children! And with that, let us go into the land that God has placed before us so that His glory will be seen by all around us!

© 2008 by Ken Peters